[At-Large] [policy] Re: Documents and Draft Agenda for ALAC Monthly Teleconference, 8th April 2008

[Wendy Seltzer]

Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:

> Many thanks for your comments. We would of course be happy to create wiki pages of all of these texts if the community wishes us to do so.

I'd love to see people discussing substance... anywhere! I think
editable wiki pages would help.

> However, with respect to emailing out texts either as attachments or in the body of emails, since those on low-bandwidth connections have made it clear that this is a real problem for them we have refrained from taking either of these steps. We are also aware that in some areas, community members must not only live with low-bandwidth connections, but must also pay for the bandwidth that they do use.
> 
> For these reasons, it is our hope is that those of you who are fortunate enough to have broadband connections would be able to live with visiting URLs to retrieve documents, instead of insisting on increasing the bandwidth required for all participants by including the texts in the body of emails, or as attachments. Of course, if the community wishes to decide to standardise on one kind of method of transmission over another, we would be happy to accommodate those wishes.
> 
> In deference to those on low-bandwidth connections we have truncated the message below - apologies in advance is this is disagreeable.

It is with some irony that I report that your "truncated" HTML message
came in at the same 13 KB as my full post in text-only format.  Text,
unencumbered by extraneous markup, is quite efficient.

I apologize to those on low-bandwidth connections, but I'd recommend you
use a gateway to store and forward messages, rather than limiting the
entire group's communications.  We simply can't discuss texts
effectively without sharing and editing the texts.  Sadly, I haven't
seen much evidence that we discuss texts or policies effectively, lately.

--Wendy

-- 
Wendy Seltzer -- wendy at seltzer.org
phone: +1.914.374.0613 // office: 617.373.7331
Visiting Professor, Northeastern University School of Law
Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html
http://www.chillingeffects.org/
https://www.torproject.org/